Passing It On

I borrowed the title of this post from Larry Lehmer who has a blog called Passing It On. Lately I have been thinking about the many things I want to pass on to my children and grandchildren. There are many family keepsakes that I have identified, written their history, and want to pass on to my children and grandchildren. I also try to tell the grandchildren stories about what it was like when I was a little girl. I pass recipes on to my daughters-in-law, and I have begun writing the stories of our family history. One of the things that I had not considered was passing on family resemblance. However, a couple of summers ago I took a picture of my mother standing next to my brother's son. I did a double take when I saw that picture because my brother's son looked so much like my dad standing next to my mother.

Recently someone said that our granddaughter, Em, looks a lot like me. That surprised me because, of course, I cannot see the resemblance, but I had taken a picture of Em when she made her First Communion in April. Today I was going through some pictures my mother had of us as children. I found the picture on the right. Mother had written "Taken on Pat's First Communion Day" on the back of the picture. I was amazed at the resemblance to the picture taken of Em. We both seemed very serious on our First Communion Day. These pictures convinced me that we are also passing on a family resemblance.

GRANDMOTHER'S FRIED CHICKEN

My Willett grandmother lived in a small Texas town near Lubbock. I stayed with her sometimes in the summer and she made the best crispy fried chicken, velvety smooth mashed potatoes and thick cream gravy that I have ever tasted—makes my mouth water just thinking about it! Grandmother’s meal planning began in her back yard where she kept the hens that laid eggs for the family. I can picture her now, in a dress with an apron covering the front, marching out the kitchen door and into the chicken yard where she grabbed a plump hen by the feet. In a deft maneuver, she popped its neck and left it to run circles around the back yard until it dropped. Next the hen went into a pot of boiling hot water on the back porch. The smell was awful, but soon the wet feathers were plucked off and set aside to dry for a pillow-in-the-making.

Grandmother then gutted the chicken and cut it into pieces. She coated each piece on a big cutting board covered with flour, a pinch of salt and a shake of pepper. Meanwhile, a big cast iron dutch oven on Grandmother’s stove was heating up the oil to cook the chicken. I believe Grandmother used Crisco to fry her chicken—and for lots of other recipes in her kitchen. She might also have added a bit of the bacon drippings that she kept in a metal container on the back of her stove.

After Grandmother had the chicken pieces well covered in flour, she carefully lowered them into the popping hot grease in her dutch oven. The pieces were cooked and turned until they became a crispy golden brown. Meanwhile, Irish potatoes that had been boiled were mashed with big pieces of butter, a dash of milk, a pinch of salt and a little pepper in them. Grandmother mashed them with her electric mixer until nary a lump could be found.

When the chicken was done, Grandmother took the pan and threw flour into the leftover oil and began adding milk as she stirred it over a low flame. Small crunchy bites left over from the fried chicken were stirred into the mixture and it all became wonderful cream gravy to be spread over the mashed potatoes.

Somewhere along the line, Grandmother had time to slice tomatoes from her garden and warm up some of her home-canned green beans. All of this made up a delicious meal on a warm summer’s evening in West Texas—without air conditioning!

LEAVING HOME

High school seniors are graduating this time of year and many are considering leaving home for the first time. For many parents and some students this impending separation is a difficult time. I do not remember that leaving home was a painful time for me. Rather, I believe that I had gleefully anticipated going off to college as my high school days began to draw to a close at the end of the 1950s. My parents encouraged my dreaming and planning for my college years and I had high hopes for several illustrious careers as I prepared to launch myself out into the world.


My first brave step forward was to enroll in a Texas Panhandle college located about twenty miles from our house. I happily moved into the dorm—Cousins Hall—and learned the very strict rules. Those rules included not wearing pants downstairs, no boys except chaperoned in the downstairs living room, a strict curfew, bed check every night, and a clean room check every week. The dorm also gave me my first experience in sharing a communal bathroom and showers.


Dorm life was quite a change from our warm family atmosphere, but I was determined to make it work for me. I do not remember much about my classes but the social life was enchanting. I quickly acquired a new boy friend with a new car sporting large fins. I pledged my mother’s sorority and acquired many “sisters” to help integrate me into campus life and the activities on campus. Those first two years of college went by in a flash.

My next step farther from home came when I began to dream of going to Kerrville for the summer to teach swimming at a camp for handicapped children. First I had to learn to swim which led me to discover a love for the water that I still have. I was a natural in the water and sailed through the swimming classes and my Life Saving and Water Safety Instructor certification in one year. My parents were not too sure about allowing me to go that far from home but I was hired and off I went. Oh, what a glorious time I had in Kerrville amongst all those trees. I gained many new loves that summer including a boy friend from Austin. I also gained a deep love for the Texas Hill Country and a pet skunk named Pepe La Pew that I kept under the bunk I shared with a blind counselor. She loved to help me take care of Pepe and at the end of the summer I took him home to Mother, poor dear, who later donated it to the zoo.


From Kerrville, I moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas where I received my first degree, but did not marry the boy I met in Kerrville. After graduation, I taught in Austin for three years until I married and we moved to California. Thus my separation from home was fairly well accomplished. I still returned home frequently for the next 40 years, but I never returned there to live.


Do you have a story about leaving home? Take some time to write about your leaving home experience--or experiences. Some of you may have left home, returned, and left home again. Write about it.

Graduation Time

It seems like it is graduation time all over the place right now. I ran across this picture the other day and remembered back to the day (several years ago) that our daughter-in-law, Kara, our #2 Son, and I all graduated on the same day. It was an interesting experience and one that I treasure! Since that time we have all moved to other cities, #2 Son and Kara have added three girls to their family, and we are all involved in other jobs and endeavors now.

And then there was the picture on the left taken when our oldest grandchildren (and only ones at that time) were quite young. Now they are both in their teens and our #1 granddaughter is as tall as I am. Mercy! How time flies! We have added another sweet daughter-in-law and four more grandchildren since then--and one more grandchild on the way.

OUR FIRST YEAR TOGETHER

Today I was going through a box of things I had stored in our barn and found an album that I had made for my husband as an anniversary present after our first year of marriage. I thought our boys might enjoy looking at pictures of their parents that first year. How young we looked then!

On our July Honeymoon we traveled across from Texas, where we were married, to California where my husband had a fellowship to attend a leadership training program at San Fernando Valley State College beginning the next January. We planned to find a place to live and enjoy the sights as we drove to the Los Angeles area. I think we visited every Indian ruin between Texas and California, but we had fun along the way. First we stopped in Albuquerque and visited hubby's aunt for a couple of days.

After we left Albuquerque, we headed west, stopping at interesting places until we reached California. In Northridge, we stayed with friends who were in the program that hubby would being the next January. We found an apartment and made arrangements to rent it when we arrived in January. We returned to Texas and began our last semester of teaching before pulling up stakes and moving to California. Here is a picture of the first house we rented--fully furnished.

We spent the first Christmas that we were married with my parents and brother and sister, and Fancy, the dog that my parents inherited when we all left home.

After Christmas, we packed up all our belongings in a U-Haul trailer, hooked it up to our Chevrolet Malibu and headed for our great adventure in California. For me, it was a bit like a big vacation because I did not plan to work. I had a wonderful time exploring all the new shopping places, discovering a world of new fruits and vegetables in the ABC Grocery Store where we shopped and exploring the wonders of Topanga Plaza--a wonderful shopping mall (before shopping malls were popular in Texas). I did end up doing some part-time work for the college and typed papers for hubby and some of the other students for spending money.

While we were in California, we did a fair amount of sightseeing, saw some snow, the Redwood Forest and local attractions, including Universal City and Busch Gardens. I also went with friends to Disneyland, but hubby missed that trip.

My sister came to visit and we had a wonderful time showing her around. We even picked a few oranges from the orange trees on the campus.

Graduation time finally arrived and we began to pack for our next adventure. It was hard to say goodbye to so many friends that we had made while in the San Fernando Valley but we still stay in touch with some of them even though it has been more than 40 years since we spent that time together in California. From California we moved to Chicago because hubby landed a job there and that was a whole new adventure for us.

Lots of memories were packed into that first year of our marriage--fun memories, interesting experiences and wonderful new friends!

A MAN OF MANY TALENTS

My father’s father was Joseph Newton Riggs, Sr., but I called him Granddaddy Riggs. He was also known in Amarillo as J.N. I did not know him well and he died when I was about nine. He spent the last three years of his life in a nursing home in Dallas, so I did not see him after I was five or six years old. He was always a mystery to me.

I recall Granddaddy Riggs as a little old man who did not say much and followed my grandmother, Mammy, around and did what she told him to do. I thought she was very bossy and seemed to treat him like a child. I even thought that he might not have been too bright. The two pictures to the left are the way that I remember Granddaddy Riggs. I suspect his health was beginning to decline in those years and that is probably why we do not have many pictures of Granddaddy Riggs in our family photographs after that time.

About ten years ago, I began seeking more information about Granddaddy Riggs. I was always curious about what kind of man he really was and decided to ask my father about him. Daddy had never said much about his father and it was clear that his mother played a much more important role in his life. With Daddy’s stories, and the help of the Amarillo Public Library, and the Amarillo newspaper archives, I found out quite a bit about Granddaddy Riggs.

Daddy told me that Granddaddy Riggs was first married to Minnie Little in Paris, Texas, and they had three children. Minnie Little died shortly after the birth of Katherine (Kate), their third child. The older two children in the family were Ralph Smith Riggs and George Record Riggs. According to Daddy, the children were kept by a Mrs. Bettison in Paris, Texas, until Granddaddy Riggs married Maude Ophelia Hancock (we called her Mammy) and then the children later moved to live with Granddaddy and Mammy in Amarillo.

According to Daddy, Granddaddy Riggs worked as a salesman for a small wholesale hardware company in Paris, Texas, after his first wife died. He then went to work for Simmons Hardware Company in St. Louis, Missouri for a time. Since he is not listed in the 1900 Texas Census, I assume that he was in Missouri in 1900—just a year after the death of his first wife. However, he is not listed in the Missouri Census Index either. Daddy said that Granddaddy Riggs became a specialty salesman for Keen Kutter knives, scissors and garden tools. The Keen Kutter line of tools was a product of the E.C. Simmons Hardware Company, and those tools are now sought out as collector’s items.

Granddaddy Riggs moved his new wife, Maude Hancock Riggs, to Longview, Texas, and that is where Daddy was born. The birth certificate for Daddy states that his father was working as a traveling salesman for Simmons Hardware at the time of the birth of his son. Daddy said that Granddaddy Riggs met Mr. E.W. Hardin, the founder of Amarillo Hardware Company, in St. Louis, MO, when they were both working there. Mr. Hardin encouraged Granddaddy Riggs to move to Amarillo to work for Amarillo Hardware Company as a traveling salesman in the early days of the company they moved to Amarillo shortly after Daddy was born in 1906. At first they rented a house and then, about 1908, Granddaddy Riggs built a large home at 1410 Monroe for his family.

The picture to the left shows the newly finished Riggs home in Amarillo. Mammy wrote the names Kate, Newton (Daddy), and Maude (Mammy) on the picture. Granddaddy and Mammy raised their children in that house and Mammy stayed there until her death in 1959. The house was remodeled in later years. The porch on the left side was turned into a sun room and a portico, driveway and garage were added on the right side.

Granddaddy Riggs worked as a traveling salesman for Amarillo Hardware Company in the Texas Panhandle for a time, and then opened a car dealership in Amarillo. The 1910 census lists J.N, 35, living at 1410 Monroe Street with his wife, Maude, and children: Ralph, 14; Record, 13; Katherine, 10; and J. Newton, 2. The 1910 census states that the occupation of J.N. is “Commercial Traveler.” The census also indicates that he owned his home and did not owe any money on the house. By 1920 the city directory shows that he owned Panhandle Motor Company. He was also part owner of a hardware store in Dalhart, and was elected a County Judge in Amarillo in the 1930s. During his years in Amarillo, he also acquired a number of real estate lots and property in the city.

According to newspaper articles in the archives of the Amarillo Globe News and the Amarillo Daily News, Granddaddy Riggs was a busy and productive man in his younger days and was quite an active leader in civic organizations. He was Chairman of the Victory Loan Committee of Potter County in 1919 and is listed as an organizing member of the Amarillo Lions Club that year. He was elected eminent commander of the Masonic Lodge in 1920. He was president of the Lions Club in 1922, president of the Amarillo-Panhandle Automotive Association, and was a director of the Tri-State Fair Association in 1923. He was elected president of the Board of City Development in 1925, was a Panhandle Council Boy Scout sponsor in 1927 and was president of the group that year. He was Potentate of the Khiva Shrine Temple in 1929 (see picture to the left). He was quoted in a 1938 newspaper story entitled “Plains Drummer” describing the life of traveling salesmen in the Panhandle.

The newspapers also had several articles about his tenure as county judge in Potter County between 1935 and 1938, including one about budget woes, another about the role of the county judge, and a humorous one over a salary dispute, entitled “Ink Pots Fly in County Row.” Through Daddy’s stories and the pictures and newspaper articles that I found, I came to know much more about Granddaddy Riggs, and I feel that I have grown a great deal closer to him through my research. I learned what an active and productive man he was. I now see him as someone who was involved in a leadership capacity with a number of civic organizations, who owned his own business, and who was also a well-known county judge. I regret that I missed knowing more about him earlier in my life. However, I am thankful that the picture I have of him now is much fuller than what I remembered from my childhood.

Thankful Thursday

I am very thankful for my blog. It has been so much fun learning how to create my blog and watch the format that has emerged. I was not sure that I would be able to master the technology required to do this "blog thing" that everyone was talking about--mostly the younger set, and I certainly am not very technologically savvy. However, I wended my way through all the setup process, learned to insert pictures, and have gotten over the nervousness of having my writing "out there" in cyberspace.

I have enjoyed sharing pictures with my family and reconnecting with cousins whom I have not seen in years and years. That probably has been my number one delight along with comments from family members! Next I have enjoyed putting some of my family history stories together with old photographs and posting them for our family to read. I even have one "hometown" reader who seems to enjoy my stories of her town long before she lived there--or was even born, for that matter. And the blog is a nice way to keep family members informed about what is happening in our spread-out family!

Yes, I am truly grateful for my blog and the opportunities that it has provided for me and for my family.

Aunt Patty

Aunt Patty was my mother’s unmarried younger sister. I was named for her. She was really an unusual person and when I was young, she lived with us and often went on vacations with us. As I grew older, I really enjoyed talking to Aunt Patty because she never seemed to see things like other adults. I think she never quite grew up and retained some of a child’s way of thinking about the world.

Aunt Patty was short and petite. She wore thick glasses and had beautiful skin—even up until the time she died. She always dressed well and collected many things. Her house was filled with tiny ceramic animals, owls, statues of saints, medals, and unusual musical instruments that she never quite mastered.

When I was seven Aunt Patty let me stay with her for a while after my brother was born and Mother was sick for several months that winter. I resented having to stay with Aunt Patty because Mother took my new brother and my sister and went to stay with my grandmother. I loved going to grandmother’s house and felt left out. I stayed with Aunt Patty in her tiny apartment with the Murphy bed and I slept on her couch. She always cooked a post roast on Sundays and then it seemed like she fed me ground roast beef sandwiches every day. I cannot stand the thought of those sandwiches now. I was so glad when my mother returned and rescued me from those ground beef sandwiches.

When my grandfather died, Grandmother moved in with Aunt Patty in Pampa. At first they lived side by side in the Kelly Apartments, just a block from our house. However, they soon moved to a house that Grandmother rented at 1901 Duncan Street. I am not sure Aunt Patty was all in favor of that, but Grandmother thought that was the way things should be. Grandmother and Aunt Patty lived together about twenty years. After about five years of living near us, Aunt Patty decided to move to Colorado Springs where we had spent some of our family vacations, and, of course, Grandmother went with her. During those years, we got lots of letters from Grandmother and Aunt Patty and we visited back and forth.

Looking back on it, I think Aunt Patty was never too happy during those years of her life. We always received lots of letters filled with grave details of her many and various ailments. I believe she was always looking for a fairy tail life with a “living happily ever after ending” and she never found that kind of happiness. She continued to live alone in Colorado Springs even after Grandmother died. We visited her the last time in 1999.

Through the years the unusual letters, antics, gifts, and activities of Aunt Patty always amused us. Most special to us were her Christmas presents. We miss those crazy gifts now that she is gone. Her gifts at Christmas (and sometimes on birthdays, too) were large boxes of the most unusual things imaginable—inexpensive things she ordered from mail order catalogs and magazines plus things she bought from Wal-Mart or the drug store. Her gifts to our family rarely ever matched the person she sent it to. We usually saved her box of gifts until the last to open with groans and then laughter at what she had sent. We giggled as we unwrapped the packages and tried to figure what they might be used for—often trading out our gifts. Christmas has lost some of its fun in the years since she died.

My final laughter came when Aunt Patty died and everyone gathered for her funeral and burial. I am told that the cousin in charge of her affairs opened the envelope containing her last wishes and began to roll his eyes. He told us that Aunt Patty wanted to be buried in a plain pine box standing straight up facing Pikes Peak in a plot she had specifically chosen at the cemetery. The funeral home people also rolled their eyes and said, “No!” The plain pine box did not meet funeral codes and they would not even consider the “standing straight up” part of her wishes, so Aunt Patty is probably resting uneasily, having been buried in the “normal” way—but “normal” she was not and I miss her in our way-too-normal family!

JUNIOR HIGH

For seven years I went to Holy Souls Catholic School with two grades in the same room. The summer before I began my eighth grade year, my parents decided to transfer me to Pampa Junior High School, not too far from our house. Finally, I was able to go to school with all the neighborhood children. A whole group of us walked to school together, down Browning Street to Cuyler, where the two story, yellow brick school building stood. The gymnasium was in one corner of the city block and the school in another portion of the block. The school building is no longer there, but my memories of it are still vivid. I recall the musty, old book, and dusty chalkboard smell that struck my nose the first time I set foot in that building.


The latter part of my seventh grade year, I fell madly in love with a cute neighbor boy, Billy, who lived just a block from us. Now, hopefully, we would be in the same classes and could walk to school with each other—maybe even do our homework together after school. Oh, yes! My daydreams were extremely specific along those lines.


I went to register for eighth grade. My neighborhood friends had warned me repeatedly to avoid—at all costs—getting the dreaded Miss Clubb. She had a reputation of being the most terrible history teacher in the whole school! I quaked in my boots when I heard her name because she had such a frightful reputation. In my worst thoughts about her, I could see her stomping around the school in huge combat boots with a big club, making life miserable for all the students.


On the first day of school I was holding my breath to see what teacher I had for history. I just knew that I would die a slow and horrible death if I got Miss Clubb. I had had weeks of nightmares about being in her class. I was nervous about starting a new school anyway, but the thought of having to spend a whole terrible year with Miss Clubb was almost more than I could endure. That first day I looked at my class assignments and, naturally, I had Miss Clubb for history and my world came clattering down around my earlobes—and to make matters worse, Billy was not in any of my classes. I was certain I would not survive my eighth grade year. I went home sobbing and hoped my mother would bail me out. Instead, she encouraged me to try a few days in Miss Clubb’s class. That was not exactly what I wanted to hear, but I trudged back to school the next day—walking slowly and dragging my feet as I followed Billy to school. I was way too shy to ask if I could walk with him, so I followed about a half block behind, like a lovesick puppy.


As the days turned into weeks, my time in Miss Clubb’s history class was surprisingly interesting. She was a strict disciplinarian and did not allow any mischief in her class. To be truthful Miss Clubb turned out to be a tiny, soft-spoken woman with white hair braided and pinned up on top of her head. She gave us difficult assignments, but I became wrapped up in them and developed a real love for history as the year progressed. I will always be grateful to “the dreaded Miss Clubb” for treating me to a priceless year of history in her class. And I learned an important lesson—not to always believe my friends and their assessment of teachers.


While my love for history blossomed and grew that year, my puppy love did not flourish because, in my shyness, I never did figure out how to engage in conversation with Billy. It was not until several years later that we became friends and I learned that he was just about as shy as I was. We still stay in touch with each other occasionally, almost 50 years later. We met recently at a class reunion and he is still very sweet and cute. Sigh!

SIDEWALK MEMORIES

The sidewalks that I remember best are the ones in my neighborhood when I was growing up in the Texas Panhandle. Those sidewalks surrounded our whole block except for the space in front of Billy Bob Caldwell’s house down the hill towards the dry creek. I am not sure why their sidewalk was missing, but their house was set way back on their lot and they used their front yard as a parking lot for a number of old cars. There always seemed to be men there taking parts out of those cars or putting things into strange places under the raised hoods.

The rest of our block had sidewalks that we children used mainly for roller skating. The concrete sidewalks were installed in squares. The squares were probably originally flat on the ground. However, huge elm trees that grew along the curbs in most yards sent out bulky roots along the surface of the ground and those roots caused the squares of sidewalk to tilt at various angles. Some squares were even cracked into two or more pieces. This interesting phenomenon made roller skating quite an adventure. The tilts and humps of the sidewalk caused us to become skilled at navigating the ups and downs and the bumps and dips that we encountered as we sped around the block until we came to Billy Bob’s front yard. We could not skate in the dirt for fear of clogging up our ball bearing wheels, so we turned around at Billy Bob’s and went the other direction around the block, jumping the curb at the gravel alley and gingerly walking our skates across that rocky surface.

Roller skating was a favorite after school activity. I remember dashing home to change clothes, donning my stiff-as-a board blue jeans that chaffed between the legs by the end of the afternoon, strapping on my skates with leather ankle straps and tightening the front toe grips until the soles of my brown, scuffed oxfords curled up a bit. I then proudly put my skate key on a string around my neck. The skate key was a very important part of the whole roller skating activity. The skate key (seen in the middle of the picture above) kept wheels on tight and secured the nut on the bottom of the skate that allowed it to be lengthened or shortened. It also tightened the metal toe grips on the front of the skate. Everything had to be secure to keep the skates on the shoe.

I suspect that we became as skilled on our roller skates as the skate boarding youngsters I see today—jumping curbs, going down steps, and facing a variety of uneven surfaces.

GRANDDADDY'S ROSARY

In the early 1990s Mother gave me a rosary in a box for Christmas with a note that said “This rosary belonged to your Great-Granddad Willett. Treasure it and enjoy.” I immediately recognized the heavy ruby red rosary with silver caps on the beads as one that had belonged to my maternal grandfather. It may have belonged to Granddaddy’s father, but I did not know that. I just remember seeing Granddaddy use it.

When I first looked at the rosary in that small jewelry box my mind was flooded with the memory of my small, round Granddaddy kneeling by his bed each night saying his rosary in their bedroom. He then put the rosary on the post of their four-poster bed by his pillow where he kept it. I would often finger the beads of the rosary in the daytime, but always with a sense of the reverence with which Granddaddy handled it.

I treasured that rosary and kept it in my dresser drawer. A few years ago we moved and the rosary disappeared from its box in the drawer where I kept it. I thought the movers or someone had taken it from my drawer and was very heartsick when I thought about that empty box and the note.

Recently I was going through a box of papers and books when the rosary fell out of the box. I fell on my knees and cradled the rosary in my hands for a long time—a treasure restored! I have no idea how the rosary disappeared and then reappeared, but I shiver with joy every time I think about my treasured keepsake--Granddaddy’s rosary!

WE CALLED HER "MAMMY"

Mammy was my dad’s mother and she wanted us to call her “Mammy.” We often went to visit Mammy in Amarillo when I was growing up. Mammy was tall and stately—almost six feet tall with big bones, large, dark eyes and dark, tight, curly hair, which she wore very short. When I was little, she seemed enormous with long arms and exceptionally long fingers. When she went out she always dressed in suits with frilly blouses. I doubt if she ever owned a pair of pants, but she did love beautiful shoes and hats. On her fingers, she wore lovely rings that always seemed too loose and clinked, along with the many sturdy bracelets that she always wore. I inherited one of those beautiful antique rings and several of those bracelets which are made of ivory.

Mammy was very strict and I was always a little bit afraid of her. However, I still remember many bits of wise advice that she gave me. I liked helping her in the garden where she grew beautiful, tall flowers. One day I was having a wonderful time carrying dirt in a garden spade and piling it up on the sidewalk. Mammy noticed what I was doing and told me to put the dirt back where I got it and gave me a broom to sweep the sidewalk. I gave the dirt a casual brush or two with the broom and she told me to do a better job of cleaning up the sidewalk. I will never forget her words which have followed me through life: “If the job is worth doing, it is worth doing right.”

Another bit of advice Mammy often emphasized was to put all of my money in the bank and save it for a rainy day. She also gave me distinct instructions for only using four squares of toilet paper when I went to the bathroom because more would stop up the toilet. I often laugh when I roll off more than four squares of toilet paper and feel a twinge of guilt that perhaps Mammy is still watching somewhere over my shoulder.

Mammy loved old things, especially beautiful old things. She touched her old crystal vases with such a sense of awe and then talk about them with such seriousness that I soon grew to love old things myself. She sometimes let me hold the old pieces and stressed how important they were in our family history. Now I have some of her old pieces and I love to look at them and handle them, but I also gained a wonderful sense of the importance of family history from Mammy during those times when she shared her treasures and stories with me.

Fortunately, I was able to spend time with Mammy after she had several strokes. I was in high school at the time and I learned about her romantic side and her love of poetry. She was a great dreamer and told me many stories those last years of her life. Now, I wish I had paid more attention to her stories and written them down, but I was young and impatient to get on with my own life and did not understand the importance of the life lessons that she was teaching me.

THE BEST VACATIONS EVER

THE BEST VACATIONS EVER

The best vacations that I can remember are the ones that Daddy used to plan for us. His company gave him two weeks of vacation each year and he always “put in” for the last two weeks in July. He was a traveling salesman in the Texas Panhandle and he drove miles and miles each week to cover his territory for his wholesale hardware company. However, for his vacations, he always took us on marathon trips throughout the Southwest. We visited national parks and stayed in small motels along the way. Most of our trips west followed the now famous Route 66 from Texas to New Mexico and across to Arizona. We also took trips up into Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado.

Each year my dad began planning for our vacation right after Christmas. He started by bringing out his collection of maps of all the states in the Southwest that he was interested in that year. He then began to map out a route by calculating how far he could drive each day and what we could see along the way. He also ordered books from AAA telling about all the sights that we could see on his mapped-out route. This process of planning our trip took weeks and weeks. We began to hear about the wonders that we would see and then we three children poured over the books with him during the spring months. By the time we were ready to leave in July, we had a good idea of all the wondrous sights we would see that year.

We began packing for our trips a couple of weeks before we were to leave. We took the usual things like cameras, summer clothes, bathing suits, water jugs, picnic supplies, and an old army cot for my young brother to sleep on in the motel or tourist court, as they were called in those days. In addition to those necessities, we packed games to play and crafts to work on in the car, and piles of books to read along the way. These trips took place during the 1950s in a car that was not air-conditioned. There were five of us in our family: my parents, my sister, my brother, and myself.

Our trips took us over many miles and my dad had certain rules about those trips. The number one rule was that we got up early each day and drove as hard and as fast as our car would go until we either arrived at an interesting stopping place or it was approaching dinnertime. We usually stopped for dinner at night at a restaurant unless the motel had a place where Mother could cook our supper. We had breakfast in our room in the motel—donuts and sweet rolls—and for lunch, we stopped for a picnic that Mother fixed for us. We always stayed in one room in the motel, with a bed for Mother and Daddy, a bed for my sister and I, and the old army cot for my brother. Our whole family went to bed early and read until time for lights out. The next morning we set out for that day’s destination on our map.

We children were not allowed to fight (too much) and we were encouraged to occupy ourselves while riding in the back seat of the car. We did finally acquire a station wagon—a “woody”—and that helped us to spread out somewhat. I believe it was at this point that we began including Aunt Patty or my grandmother in those trips. When we were traveling, we often folded down the two back seats, making a flat surface, and played card or board games while sailing across the desert southwest. Definitely no seat belts in those days!

Those trips were often so hot. Mother filled the water jug with water, and ice if available, each morning at the motel and, in the heat of the late afternoon, we wet washcloths that Mother had brought with the still-cool water to put on our faces and necks to cool down.

It is amazing to think how we managed to travel like that in those days. Places to stay were much more primitive than now and travel was not as streamlined and comfortable as it is today. However, we had great times on those trips and I remember the beauty and majesty of the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, Yellowstone National Park, Bryce, Zion, Mesa Verde and their beautiful mountains and colorful desert scenes. I treasure those memories and I am so grateful to my dad for taking us all those places.

A New Venture

For some time now I have been considering putting together a collection of my stories about growing up in the Texas Panhandle. This first post will be my introduction, and as I polish the snippets of my memories, I will add one from time to time. See what you think:

GROWING UP IN PAMPA, TEXAS

I grew up in the small Texas Panhandle town of Pampa in the 1940s and 1950s. Pampa was a thriving oil town with a carbon black plant, and refineries that belched black smoke and malodorous stuff into the air which combined with the stench of the open oil and gas wells. I often wonder about the health hazards of growing up in such a foul environment but all of our family seems healthy enough. After all, Daddy lived to be 93 and Mother is still alive at 92.

Summers were hot and dry most of the time, and winters were cold and often snowy. It seems that the wind blew year around…hot and dry in the summer, and cold and frigid in the winter. We had no air conditioning, but Daddy put a swamp cooler in the dining room window the last few years we lived in Pampa. The heat in our house came from the oven in the kitchen, a gas stove in our living room false fireplace, a floor furnace in the middle of the house, and an open gas stove in the bathroom. I think we all burned our feet on the floor furnace as we were learning to walk, but it was great to stand over that furnace to warm up on a cold winter’s day.

Daddy was a traveling salesman for a wholesale hardware company and was gone most of the week “working his territory.” On Fridays and Saturdays he sold hardware products to the stores in and around Pampa and sometimes let me accompany him on those days. I had a wonderful time visiting in the hardware stores and wandering around lumberyards. To this day, the smell of wood can transport me straight back to a Saturday afternoon in a Higginbotham-Bartlett Lumberyard with Daddy leaning on the counter chatting with the men working there and writing down their orders in his order book with everything in triplicate!

Mother made most of our clothes and was a wonderful cook. She read to us, played games with us, and also did needlework, and many arts and crafts. All three of us children grew up doing arts and crafts with her and learning crafts of our own. I remember beading, copper tooling, needlework, paint by number books, shell jewelry, copper enameling, leather tooling, and many, many other crafts. It seems like we tried them all at one time or another, thanks to Mother’s help and encouragement.

Our lives in Pampa were busy and full, and I remember that as a very happy time in my life.